LOS ANGELES — Men who go bald in their early 20s have a doubled risk of developing prostate cancer, but those who lose hair in their 30s and 40s apparently are not at greater risk, French researchers reported this week. The findings suggest that men who lose their hair very early in life might benefit from increased screening.
Because the male hormones involved in hair growth also play a role in prostate cancer, researchers have been tantalized by possible links between balding and prostate cancer. But past studies have yielded conflicting results or none.
Dr. Philippe Giraud, a professor of radiation oncology at Paris Descartes University, and Dr. Michael Yassa, a radiation oncologist at the University of Montreal, studied 388 men being treated for prostate cancer and 281 healthy men. They reported in the Annals of Oncology that 37 of the men with prostate cancer had some balding at the age of 20, but only 14 of the healthy men had had balding at that age. But there was no association with the type or pattern of hair loss, they reported, and no association with balding at older ages.
Androgenic alopecia, sometimes known as male pattern baldness, is common in men, affecting about half of them in the course of their lives.
